Monday Monday 7.20.2008

Monday Monday

Dear Readers:

I’m coming off a weekend spent in a New York State of Mind because I made it to both major league baseball stadiums within New York City. Again, it is my goal to see every Major League Baseball stadium out there. . . .maybe it’s a crazy goal, but hey crazy is My Life.

The city of New York broke ground for William A. Shea Municipal Stadium in the year 1960 and it has since been the long time home of Major League Baseball’s New York Mets. Although the venue more commonly known as “Shea Stadium” is best known for the Mets baseball team, it has also made history as the temporary home of the New York Yankees, Jets, and Giants. Not only one of the nation’s most well known sports complexes, Shea has also gained notoriety as a venue where the greatest musicians of the past 50 years have performed.

Don’t Ask Me Why, but the new Citi Field will replace historic Shea Stadium in 2009. Sports fans do have the chance to see the Met’s finish out the 2008 season, while music fans got the opportunity to witness the “Last Play at Shea” performed primarily by Billy Joel this past weekend. Maggie and I (along with Brian Smith seated on the other side of the stadium) attended this historic concert marking my second Billy Joel concert in two years. For obvious reasons, this concert couldn’t “blow the roof” off Shea Stadium, but I’m not sure a demolition crew will be needed because Mr. Joel and friends certainly tore the house down – and who said We Didn’t Start the Fire!

Since the opening act at Shea Stadium back in August of 1965 was performed by the Beatles, I guess it seems rather fitting that Paul McCartney came out with Billy Joel to answer the final encore. Although Sir Paul McCartney graced us with his age old “words of wisdom” singing “Let it Be,” Billy Joel left the arena with his own “words of wisdom” that were somewhat contradictory to those words of the former Beatle. I believe “The Entertainer”s words of wisdom were and I quote “Don’t take shit from anyone” – not quite the same as “Let it Be.”

For most people seeing both Billy Joel and Paul McCartney on the same stage on the same night might make for the perfect evening, but I’m completely Shameless when I say that witnessing Garth Brooks come out to perform with Billy stole the show for me. Garth Brooks is to me as Dave Mathews is to my friend Spurchise or in other words – he would be my favorite singer/songwriter/musician. Garth might be a country singer, but I have to say It’s Still Rock ‘n’ Roll to Me.

The musical years that came before My Generation didn’t belong to just Billy Joel and Paul McCartney, but also to Roger Daltrey: the lead singer of The Who, who also performed at Friday night’s show. You May Be Right to think that Billy Joel, Paul McCartney, Garth Brooks, and Roger Daltrey would make a good enough evening, but what super concert would be complete without Steve Tyler from Aerosmith urging us to Walk this Way. On a sidebar, from a distance Steve Tyler looks like Captain Jack Sparro! Don’t worry – there’s more . . . no matter what people say about Only the Good Die Young, I can certainly say that not all of them do because I saw Tony Bennett sing with Billy Joel and for all his talent – the man is no spring chicken.

Although the woman behind us refused to accept the fact that we would be standing, I turned around during Paul McCartney’s send off and I Saw Her Standing There dancing to Let it Be!

So as you can see, the concert was absolutely filled with incredible guest singers to make sure that the Piano Man gave Shea Stadium a very historic sendoff. It was almost as if the entire music world was singing a Lullabye to send Shea off to it’s eternal resting place. As it was heard several miles away in Highland Falls, I’m sure This Night will go down in history as one of the greatest single concerts of all time.

So that was Friday Night where because of foot traffic, trains, getting lost on the way home, etc . . . we didn’t get to sleep until about 4:00AM (you might say it was a Hard Days Night), but of course no rest for the wicked as Maggie and I were Movin’ Out at the early hour of 10:00 AM, so that we could make the Yankee Game by the 1:05 start time. To conserve time, we changed our plans last minute from riding the train into the city and take the subway to driving the car to the stadium and taking our feet into the game. I swear to be An Innocent Man when it comes to causing the Home Team curse that Maggie and I bring to every single stadium, but luckily for the Yanks – I think the curse has been broken. The home team has won two out of the last three games that Maggie and I have attended as the Yankees picked up a victory over the Oakland Athletics after 12 innings on Saturday afternoon. One might say that after 12 innings, it is a good thing those Yankees were Keeping the Faith. You may know that like Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium will also be torn down this year, so I was very happy to make the trip before all the New York walls crumble to the ground.

I’ll say a couple of more brief things about Yankee Stadium and the game we saw on Saturday.
The new Yankee Stadium doesn’t look like a ball field from the outside. It actually looks like a major State Building or Town Hall. My thought is that going to Yankee Stadium in 2009 will be like doing baseball the high class way.
I’m going to give props to the Yankee establishment for playing some Scenes from an Italian Restaurant or at least outside of the Italian Restaurant owned by Rocky Balboa in the movie named after that character. Rocky was giving the “It doesn’t matter how hard you get hit, but how hard you can get hit and get back up” speech! Loved the movie – loved the parallel to baseball.
Yankees won in 12 innings, so I’m saying since baseball in a 9 inning sport that we got a third of a game for free.
Coincidently, The Star Spangled Banner made a nice Prelude to both the concert and the baseball game.

Ok so that pretty much does it for the major events of the weekend. Back in the plain world of Ryan Joy, I am still off soda for the most part – but I have indulged in a couple of Diet Cokes over the past few weeks. Hopefully, I won’t completely fall off the wagon – but what I wouldn’t do for a little Root Beer Rag.

I’m not sure how far I’ve been from Allentown, PA or how far Maggie’s parents house is from Miami 2017, but with all this talk about the Summer fun I’m having touring around the nation, I almost forget that Swanker is doing a tour of duty over in Africa . . . perhaps he might make a side trip to Zanzibar.

As they might have said back in the Vietnam War era:

Goodnight Saigon,

Ryan

P.S. Downeaster Alexa, Ballad of Billy the Kid, She’s Always a Woman

P.S.S – If this email seems a little cryptic, scattered, and oddly worded. . . .well it is . . .but hey who else can incorporate the entire play list from a historic concert into one email.